


you’re always welcome here; you made this home for us

by natigail



Series: Phan Reality One Shots [13]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: 2020!Phan, Banter, Creator and audience dymanic, Dan Howell's Live Shows, Domestic, Established Relationship, Introspection, M/M, Mermaids UK Charity Twitch Stream, Norman Fest 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23483611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natigail/pseuds/natigail
Summary: They haven’t forgotten about him; they still miss and care about him and they welcome and embrace him with open arms.Dan has been away for a while but the viewers still love him.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Series: Phan Reality One Shots [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/788379
Comments: 21
Kudos: 80





	you’re always welcome here; you made this home for us

**Author's Note:**

> Excuse me while I'm still trying to mop up the mess on the floor that is my melted heart after Dan in that twitch stream. I still hadn't fully recovered from Norman Fest 2020. Thus, this was born, frantically typed out in an attempt to channel my overflowing fondness for one tall dimpled dork. Enjoy.

Everyone knows that Dan gets too wrapped up in his head.

He has made countless videos about talking to himself. He’s described the thought spiral that can happen in his head. He has shown him lying on the floor, like when he’d be having an existential crisis.

He has been open about it – how it’s connected to his mental health, more so in recent years.

Or well, in the years leading up to 2019. Then he had dropped off the grid with one noticeable exception in form of his coming out video.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t been working. He had almost too many projects being tended to behind the scenes, even if most of them never did see the light of day. And he had to gather a lot of energy to create his coming out video. It had taken more out of him than he had admitted but it might be the video he was the proudest of.

It was what he was going to talk about today, at least a bit.

They had prepped him a little before he would be sent live on the Mermaids UK’s twitch stream for charity. Dan had been asked to do it late, and he had found himself hesitating. It wasn’t like he couldn’t do online stuff but it felt a bit intimidating.

He had left it for too long and now it felt like he had to come back with something big and grand. He hadn’t dared to do a live show after releasing BIG into the world. He had been too overwhelmed with all of the support and he very much didn’t want to break into tears live in front of thousands of people.

Still, he missed it sometimes. He missed being able to pop on for an hour and just talk. He felt at home with his audience, even more so as the years had passed and so many of them had grown up with him. They had been one of the main reasons that he had even felt comfortable coming out.

His younger self had never thought he would be able to do that.

Phil had helped a lot too, obviously. Dan knew how much it must have cost him to step back into the closet, at least publicly, but he had done it without Dan even having to ask.

It came to the surprise of no one that Phil had also picked up on the fact that Dan was nervous about being part of the charity livestream. He had been told some of the names that would be participating and he felt widely out of place. He was just someone who made videos on the internet, and well, could he even call himself that now when he’d only put out one single video in the past year?

“We’re doing Norman Fest for April Fools, right?” Phil had said, late March when they had both been on the couch catching up on Riverdale. The show had gotten utterly absurd but Phil was shamelessly invested and so, they continued to watch.

Phil had also argued that it was Norman’s favourite show. Dan hadn’t had the heart to explain to Phil that Norman likely couldn’t see a thing that went on in the television.

“Are we?” Dan asked.

“We?”

“It’s a shared fish, Phil,” Dan said.

“Yeah, we agreed. Don’t you remember? When we got him, we said we’d need to do Pigeon Fest but better. At least, we can assure that Norman will be in frame and it’s not just empty the whole time.”

“So… you want to help, right? It’d be good practice for Saturday too.”

Dan had relented, not that he had taken much consideration. He had been feeling quite disheartened because his project had kept being pushed back. First, it was supposed to happy late last year and then it had been pushed to the spring and now everything was up in the air. Dan knew that it was one of the minor issues brought on by the pandemic – people were literally dying – but he couldn’t help but feel sad anyway. He had worked so hard on this project and it had been the thing that he wanted to return with to his audience.

He wondered how many of them had stopped caring because he had been gone for so long.

But April Fools was a good situation to tip his toes back into the water – or his hand into Norman’s aquarium – because it was nothing committal. No one could take April Fools seriously.

Dan and Phil most certainly didn’t when they decided to call the ending segment Aquarium Staff Seminar – or ASS. It felt quite safe to be behind the camera and just talking, dodging all of the hard questions to just to talk about Norman and his tank. Dan found that the words came to him easily and he fell into that voice again.

It had taken him a long time to realise but he found that he talked a specific way during live shows. It was Phil that had pointed it out to him – how he spoke almost calmly. It was a big contrast to a dinof video where he would be planned and articulate or on the gaming channel where he would be joking around and screaming.

He found that he’d missed speaking like this.

And despite the fact that they had only answered fish and aquarium related questions, it didn’t mean that Dan hadn’t seen a lot of other comments. He had expected to see a lot of people being mad at him – it was really difficult to programme that out of his brain – but instead it had mostly been an influx of excitement. People were losing their shit over his and Phil’s silly segment, in the best way.

Once the seven-hour Norman Fest 2020 was finished and shut down, Dan felt that he was distracted. He kept going on social media, just checking in and his mentions everywhere was flooded. They were so supportive and Dan found that he was once again reminded that he and Phil had somehow, almost accidentally, managed to create a community that could be really lovely.

He had felt removed from them, especially lately, but he had needed the break. He had needed to reflect. It didn’t mean that he couldn’t miss them. And he did, he realised after Norman Fest.

“That was a big hit,” Phil had said with a big smile after he’d cut off the live show. “Our boy is a star. Do you think he’s the fish that’s gotten the most fan art ever? I bet he is.”

Dan’s heart softened at Phil’s excited ramble and he pulled him into a hug, before they went back to the kitchen to make dinner.

Now it was Saturday and Dan were hiding in the corner of his camera because none other than John Barrowman was on the screen. Dan felt widely inadequate once more. It was almost as if Phil had sensed it because he walked into the room and Dan’s little corner.

He still used this corner a lot, just to do work on the computer or practice on the piano but he hadn’t been live from this spot in… over a year? It must be. The feeling sat heavy in his stomach.

“I brought you a cup of tea,” Phil said, in his best British posh voice.

Dan cracked a smile but accepted the tea all the same. He likely wouldn’t be able to drink it while live but he still appreciated the effort.

“Wait, is that John Barrowman?” Phil asked after a peak on the screen.

“Yes.”

“Damn. That’s some name to follow up.”

“Thanks, Phil,” Dan said with an eye roll and fiddled with the sleeve of his striped shirt.

“Hey,” Phil said and leaned in to place a hand on Dan’s shoulders. He gave him a comforting squeeze. “You’re awesome too, Dan.”

“Hmm…”

“Stop those thoughts,” Phil said, lightly flicking him on the forehead. “You are. You’re incredible.”

“You’re biased,” Dan said. “You’d say that the sun shines out of my asshole.”

“Maybe, it does. I could find out for you,” Phil said, grinning and poking his tongue out through his teeth. Dan had never tired of that grin. “But I am right. And they’ll show you.”

“Who?”

“Our people.”

Dan didn’t get to reply because he heard his name being mentioned. And he cringed a little at the introduction, just like he had when they had described him as a radio presenter in their announcement tweet, but it didn’t matter. This wasn’t about him. This was about trans children who needed help. Dan just wanted to help, however he could.

Surprisingly, Dan found it easy to talk when he started.

It was like something slotted into place and he needed hardly any prompting from the hosts. Maybe, it was something about this corner, and how much he had ranted from here. Maybe, it was just the familiar feeling of wanting to share and wanting to connect, more now than ever as the world was in disarray.

Being put in a similar category as Lorraine Kelly was also more than a little intimidating but Dan found that his time on the stream passed exceptionally quickly. While he was live, the donations jumped from £4,000 to £10,000. He could see the bar going up, and the donations rolling in.

His and Phil’s people.

It wasn’t only them but it was in part because of them. The same people that continued to run charity donations in both his and Phil’s honours on their birthdays. Dan knew they would make one for him this year too, whether he put out anything new yet or not. Because they shared.

They had found each other in a community that he and Phil had built and even though he was not maintaining it anymore, it was still there because of him, in part.

Dan did his best to be reassuring. He that people must have been surprised when the retweeted the announcement two hours earlier – not much warning really – but they had come running.

 _They miss you, you know,_ Phil would tell him sometimes.

Dan knew he was dodging questions about him in his weekly live shows and in the comment section on AmazingPhil. Phil said that it wasn’t bad, but that the chat or the comments would always pick up if he mentioned Dan.

As such, he didn’t do it too much and he out of anyone respected Dan's desire to work behind the scenes instead in front of the screen for a while. Dan was a little annoyed on Phil’s behalf, but Phil didn’t seem bothered. He had learned to let comments roll off him, both the overly positive and the overly negative. You shouldn’t get too invested.

Dan had always struggled with it more. He had cared too deeply about other people’s opinions, even to the point where it could paralyse him. It would freeze him in indecision because then at least he wasn’t doing anything wrong, right?

Evidently, it wasn’t because some people had stopped caring when he went away. It was completely fair. Interests wavered and Dan completely respected that. He had thought that maybe this would be the majority of the people that used to watch him.

He was surprised to see so, so many hadn’t.

They welcomed him with open arms and it felt emotional. When asked about Basically I’m Gay, he knew he needed to lament how important his audience had been to him. It had been a call out to them, a reminder that he hadn’t forgotten them either – that he never would. They had complicated his life, but they had also enriched it in ways he could never have imagined.

The half hour passed quickly and soon enough he was waving goodbye, shouting “trans rights, stay safe, see you later,” before he wheeled himself out of shot. The last part of the goodbye had slipped for his lips by instinct.

_See you later._

Later used to just mean next week or the week after that if something came up. It wouldn’t be this time, not with everything that was going on in the world but it was so easy to fall back into old patterns.

It might be because he would be coming back, eventually. It wouldn’t be the same because he had grown and changed, as had his content creation methods, but he could never really leave his audience behind. He would come back when he was ready and he was so excited to show them everything he had worked on.

Phil popped back into the room a couple minutes after Dan had signed off.

“Were you watching?” Dan asked, clicking windows closed on his computer.

“Of course,” Phil said, “and you didn’t drink your tea.”

“So, spying on me?” Dan asked, fondly. “I couldn’t very well drink my tea while talking.”

“Yes, you could. It would be very British of you. Isn’t 5 PM teatime, anyway?”

Dan shook his head, eyes crinkling as he smiled. He reached for the mug and took a sip. It was mostly cold but it still tasted right, Phil had made it just how Dan liked it.

“Thanks,” Dan said, getting up from his chair, mug in hand.

“You did well,” Phil said. 

“I just…”

“What?”

“I just hope it helped, you know, at least little.”

“I think it helped more than a little,” Phil said and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Look,” he said softly, and for a second Dan thought that Phil was showing him another video of an adorable baby animal.

He was using the same voice, as if he wanted to care and mother what he was showing Dan. But it wasn’t a video. It was a screen shot.

“There’s more,” Phil added, leaning over Dan’s shoulder to scroll through the photos.

It was tweets, tumblr posts and comments from the twitch stream itself, all talking about Dan. Phil must have snapped them during.

Dan didn’t even read them properly but just scanning over the words, he got the gist of it. People had been overjoyed to see his face and hear his voice. They had missed him, so much by the looks of it and the feeling hit Dan square in the stomach.

He had been so worried.

He had felt like he couldn’t just come out to them and appear without contributing something. It had felt like cheating because he had gone away to work on stuff with his project and to work on himself, like with his marathon training. Everything had been cancelled and Dan had felt empty and a bit like a failure.

But they weren’t mad. They weren’t being snarky, like they could at times. At most, some were poking fun at him about the gaming channel comment and to be fair, he hadn’t been the one that said he had a gaming channel. A lot of them just said how much they missed him and how nice it was to see his face again.

They showered him with compliments, mentioning how happy he looked and how glad they were to see that he was still doing well. Every single thing that Phil had screen shotted just oozed care. Some of them even commented on how excited they were to see what Dan had in store for them in the future. They were not pushing, just curious and excited.

It felt like when Dan came home from a visit without Phil – a rare occurrence but it had happened – and Dan would get to fall into Phil’s arms once he got back to their flat. It felt like being embraced and accepted and like he could breathe again. There was something comforting about his scent and the way their bodies just fit against each other. No matter how much time had passed, they would slot together like they had never been apart.

This felt like their audience all showed him, once again, that he would have a space. He had been away but they welcomed him back with open arms, even if this was just a little thing and he wasn’t even back “for real”. Dan wasn’t even sure what that meant to be honest and the future was still unsure and scary but he now knew one thing for sure.

Most of them had not forgotten about him – they were waiting, some impatiently, for him to make a reappearance. He couldn’t wait to give it to them, even if he had to wait a little longer before he dared to jump fully into the deep end of the pool.

Phil plucked his phone from Dan’s fingers, which seemed to be trembling. Dan hadn’t even noticed, eyes just burning a hole in the screen without really reading. He has just been processing, trying to take it all in.

These were the same people who had showed him that it was okay to be himself. He was the one who had told them to have the courage to exist but they were the ones that had taught him that lesson and he didn’t want to take it for granted.

“They’re just all so…” Dan said, voice trailing off when he couldn’t find an appropriate word to encompass all that he was feeling in the present moment.

“So?” Phil said, a gentle nudge, just as he also placed a hand on the small of Dan’s back. He slid his palm up under Dan’s baggy jumper, sprawling his palm directly against Dan’s skin. It was always something that grounded Dan and Phil had seemed to sense that he needed that right now.

“Why am I getting so emotional over this?” Dan said, voice shaking. “It’s silly, right?”

Phil let out a thoughtful hum. “Do you think that they are silly for freaking out and being happy with just hearing your voice or seeing your face for a few minutes?” Phil countered.

Dan’s brows furrowed. “What? No. I mean, that’s valid. I’m still a little surprised I mean that much to people at times, but I’d never judge them for becoming excited and happy. _That_ would be silly.”

“Exactly,” Phil said and he was smiling knowingly, before he leaned in to press a soft kiss to the bridge of Dan’s nose. “So, you’re not silly for missing it either.”

“Except, I’m the reason that it’s not happening. Not them.”

“Dan,” Phil said, moving his free hand to cup Dan’s cheek. “It’s not a crime to need time. They don’t hold that against you, you know. Despite all that they have done for you, you don’t owe them anything you don’t want to give.”

“I know that,” Dan said and he did but it was good to be reminded at times. “I want to, though. Just… not there quite yet.”

“And they will be there when you’re ready. It’s your, it’s our, online home.”

“I guess,” Dan said and he was a little caught up in watching the soft way that Phil’s eyes crinkled as he spoke.

“A real home is not four walls, it’s a space you carve out for yourself. This is part of your home and you will always be welcome. No matter how long you’re away from home.”

“The metaphor is getting a little out of hand, isn’t it?” Dan asked teasingly, but he was also doing it to distract from the fact that he felt like he was getting choked up.

Phil pinched his cheek and Dan sprang away laughing, he hadn’t expected that attack.

“Brat,” Phil chided.

“Yeah, but you love me anyway.”

“Unfortunately,” Phil tutted. “They do too.”

Dan looked at Phil, and he could see the sincerity in his eyes.

“I know,” Dan replied.

As Dan was falling asleep that night and it felt like some of the weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Even with project delays and only being able to face them in small doses, people were still waiting for him.

He looked forward to speaking to them again. Dan fell asleep with a smile on his face, Phil’s arms around him and a fluttering feeling of excitement in his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> [Reblog on tumblr](https://secretlywritingstories.tumblr.com/post/614504726765207552/youre-always-welcome-here-you-made-this-home-for)
> 
> Thanks for reading. I hope you liked it. It felt very cathartic to write. I miss Dan a lot, but I really do hope that he's taking the time that he needs. He sounded excited about his new project and I really hope we get to see it as soon as possible. This fic is dedicated to anyone out there like me who felt a big surge of love for Dan, as he popped up randomly this week in live shows. 
> 
> Also, I didn't proofread, so I apologise for any errors. I just needed to get this out of my head.


End file.
